DETAILED ACTION
Introduction
1. This office action is in response to Applicant's submission filed on 11/19/2024. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . Claims 1-20 are currently pending and examined below.
Drawings
2. The drawings filed on 11/19/2024 have been accepted and considered by the Examiner.
Information Disclosure Statement
3. The Information Statements (IDS) filed on 01/14/2025 and 05/01/2026 have been accepted and considered in this office action and are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97.
Priority
4. The Applicants priority to U.S. Provisional Application # 63/090,898, filed 13 October 2020, has been accepted and considered in this office action.
Double Patenting
5. The non-statutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper time-wise extension of the "right to exclude" granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Omum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed e-terminal disclaimer (e-TD) in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321 (c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a non-statutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign an e-terminal disclaimer. An e-terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b).
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-19 of U.S. Patent # 11521616. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 11521616 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11521616 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11521616 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 11521616 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 11521616 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent # 11423887. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 11423887 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11423887 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11423887 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 11423887 both teach a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 11423887 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent # 11967324. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 11967324 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11967324 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11967324 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 11967324 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 11967324 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-14 of U.S. Patent # 11600268. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 11600268 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11600268 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11600268 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 11600268 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 11600268 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent # 12198697. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 12198697 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 12198697 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 12198697 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 12198697 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 12198697 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent # 11594214. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 11594214 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11594214 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 11594214 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 11594214 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 11594214 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-14 of U.S. Patent # 12175969. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 12175969 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 12175969 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 12175969 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 12175969 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 12175969 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-16 of U.S. Patent # 12136418. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent # 12136418 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent # 12136418 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent # 12136418 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a non-provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact been patented.
As an example; claim 1 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent # 12136418 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent # 12136418 anticipates the broader claim 1 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claims 1-20 of the instant Application are also rejected on the ground of non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent Application Publication # 18969752. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims of the present application are broader in scope than those of the U.S. Patent Application Publication # 18969752 and hence the claims of the U.S. Patent Application Publication # 18969752 can anticipate those of the present invention. That is, the claims of the U.S. Patent Application Publication # 18969752 contain every limitation of the claims of the present application or the claims of the present application are obvious variants thereof. It should be noted that this is in fact a provisional non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have in fact not been patented.
As an example; claim 13 of the instant application and claim 1 of U.S. Patent Application Publication # 18969752 both disclose a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal; a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine aircraft commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would have been obvious at the time of the invention to drop narrower limitations in order to have a patent with wider applicability and freedom to operate. In other words, the narrower claim 1 of the U.S. Patent Application Publication # 18969752 anticipates the broader claim 13 of the instant application. Also, removal of the additional steps is obvious: In re Karlson, 136 USPQ 184 (1963): "Omission of an element and its function is an obvious expedient if the remaining elements perform the same functions as before".
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
6. Claims 1-14 and 17-20-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bilek (U.S. Patent Application Publication # 2016/0093302 A1) in view of Chen (U.S. Patent Application Publication # 2021/0342634 A1). Bilek is already of the record, having been disclosed by the Examiner in the prosecution of the parent Applications 17500358 and 17719835.
With regards to claim 1, Bilek teaches a system onboard an aircraft for semantic parsing of utterances, the system comprising a communication system comprising an Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio and a computing system coupled to the communication system and configured to receive an ATC audio signal from the communication system, the computing system comprising a speech-to-text module configured to determine an utterance hypothesis from the ATC audio signal (Paragraphs 13-16 and figure 1, teach that commands are transmitted to pilots via radio by the ATC and pilots receive commands audibly over a radio within the aircraft using a headset. The radio is connected to a voice recognition processor that is configured to receive and convert the taxiway voice commands into taxiway textual commands, and a taxiway clearance display coupled to the voice recognition processor that is configured to receive and display the taxiway textual commands. Para 24 and figure 2, teach that the voice recognition processor can compare the received taxiway voice command to one or more of the retrieved taxiway voice commands and using a speech recognition process or algorithm and/or by comparing the received taxiway voice command to one or more of the retrieved taxiway voice commands, locate a match. Para 27, teaches that the voice recognition processor can determine an uncertainty associated with the accuracy of the converted taxiway textual command and correct it using correlation or pilot input);
and a processing module configured to automatically determine a response to the ATC audio signal based on the aircraft commands (Para 27 and figure 1, teaches that the voice recognition processor can determine an uncertainty associated with the accuracy of the converted taxiway textual command. This may be accomplished in any of a variety of ways, including by determining a correlation between the received taxiway voice command and the taxiway voice command that is selected as being a match for the received command. An uncertainty indicator e.g., a value, a color of the taxiway textual command, and the like may be associated with and/or displayed in the taxiway clearance display for a pilot. Thus, a pilot may determine how accurate the pilot judges the converted taxiway textual command to be. An uncertainty indicator can offer alternatives if the voice recognition processor matches only part of a phrase or to an ATC voice command, the voice recognition processor can output a variety of possible taxiway textual commands, such that a pilot may select a correct or most probably, from the pilot's perspective, correct command. Moreover, the system can use AMM data to assess the probability, based upon the airport layout, that the taxiway textual command is correct);
Although Bilek teaches determination of aircraft commands as shown above, Bilek may not explicitly detail a question-and-answer (Q/A) module configured to determine commands by parsing the utterance hypothesis with a pre-trained neural network model according to a plurality of natural language queries. However, Chakraborty teaches this (Paragraphs 19-46, teach a query answering system using pre-trained neural networks which parses and classifies the input query, treating predicates in the input query as a collection of strings);
Bilek and Chakraborty can be considered as analogous art as they belong to a similar field of endeavor in command processing. It would thus have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to advantageously combine the teachings of Chakraborty (Use of a neural network to determine query hypothesis) with those of Bilek (Use of audio processing techniques for communication between aircraft and ATC) so as to enable the system of Bilek to take full advantage of distributed query processing (Chakraborty, para 3).
With regards to claim 2, Bilek teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the ATC radio comprises an ATC transmitter, wherein the response is an ATC radio response transmitted by the ATC transmitter (Para 2, teaches that commands are often provided in a voice format by one or more operators of an ATC center by way of a radio communication with a taxiing aircraft. Para 20, teaches that the system comprises a radio receiver that receives ATC commands, a voice recognition processor that can be coupled to the radio receiver, a taxiway command database that can be coupled to the voice recognition processor, a taxiway clearance display that can be coupled to the voice recognition processor and/or a flight management system or FMS that can be coupled to the voice recognition processor).
With regards to claim 3, Bilek teaches the system of claim 2, wherein the response comprises a state of the aircraft (Para 14, teaches that commands are frequently provided to pilots of aircraft by ATC centers. Commands are often provided while aircraft are located on a taxiway. Thus, commands may include information, such as, for example, information about a heading that an aircraft should take, a speed that the aircraft should assume, an upcoming obstacle, such as a ground-based vehicle or other aircraft on a heading that, if uncorrected, may result in a collision, and the like).
With regards to claim 4, Bilek teaches the system of claim 3, wherein the state of the aircraft is determined based on a flight path determined using the aircraft commands by an aircraft flight control system (Para 14, teaches that commands are frequently provided to pilots of aircraft by ATC centers. Commands are often provided while aircraft are located on a taxiway. Thus, commands may include information, such as, for example, information about a heading that an aircraft should take, a speed that the aircraft should assume, an upcoming obstacle, such as a ground-based vehicle or other aircraft on a heading that, if uncorrected, may result in a collision, and the like).
With regards to claim 5, Bilek teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the computing system is further configured to control the communication system to automatically transmit the response (Para 23, teaches that a radio receiver located on an aircraft can receive, from an ATC center, one or more taxiway voice commands. The taxiway voice commands can be communicated e.g., over a network located within the aircraft to the voice recognition processor. The voice recognition processor can communicate with or otherwise access the taxiway command database to retrieve one or more pairs of taxiway voice commands and taxiway textual commands).
With regards to claim 6, Bilek teaches the system of claim 5, wherein response transmission is performed in response to validation of the response from a pilot (Para 27, teaches that the voice recognition processor can determine an uncertainty associated with the accuracy of the converted taxiway textual command. This may be accomplished in any of a variety of ways, including by determining a correlation between the received taxiway voice command and the taxiway voice command that is selected as being a match for the received command. An uncertainty indicator e.g., a value, a color of the taxiway textual command, and the like may be associated with and/or displayed in the taxiway clearance display for a pilot. Thus, a pilot may determine how accurate the pilot judges the converted taxiway textual command to be. An uncertainty indicator can offer alternatives if the voice recognition processor matches only part of a phrase or to an ATC voice command, the voice recognition processor can output a variety of possible taxiway textual commands, such that a pilot may select a correct or most probably, from the pilot's perspective, correct command. Moreover, the system can use AMM data to assess the probability, based upon the airport layout, that the taxiway textual command is correct).
With regards to claim 7, Bilek teaches the system of claim 6, wherein validation comprises providing the response to the pilot via text-to-speech conversion (Paragraphs 16-18, teach that taxiway textual command can be presented to or displayed for a pilot of an aircraft visually in addition to, audibly over the pilot headset. This would include text to speech conversion).
With regards to claim 8, while Bilek teaches aircraft communication with the ATC using radio transmission (See para 3), however it does not explicitly detail transmitting the response to a remote entity. This is taught by Chakraborty (Paragraphs 19 and 38, teach that the query front-end may be a web application or any other form of server-based software that the user interacts with remotely. Further, the computer readable program instructions may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network or a wide area network or the connection may be made to an external computer through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider);
Bilek and Chakraborty can be considered as analogous art as they belong to a similar field of endeavor in command processing. It would thus have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to advantageously combine the teachings of Chakraborty (Use of a radio communication to connect with a remote entity) with those of Bilek (Use of audio processing techniques for communication between aircraft and ATC) as it is a well-known that both the aircraft onboard systems and the ATC can communicate with remote entities using internet or other networks.
With regards to claim 9, Bilek may not explicitly detail the limitation wherein the response comprises a semantic combination of outputs of the pre-trained neural network model based on a plurality of natural language queries. However, Chakraborty teaches this (Paragraphs 28-33, teach that in addition to server-side models, the individual mobile nodes construct models using node-specific data, such as local images, audio, video, location, and other sensor data. This information is used to characterize the local data. Time can also be used along with location history and sensor information to calculate and predict future movement patterns. Neural networks may be used in particular to form classifiers on the mobile nodes. Such neural networks may be pre-trained with parameters being distributed to the mobile nodes. At each node, it is determined whether the local content matches the query. This may include image analysis to determine whether the requested content is visible in any stored images. The analysis may additionally include any textual or contextual information attached to the content if the user tags or captions the image with text that indicates a match. This determination can be made based on a general local model, similar to the sever-side model, that runs on each mobile node. Once each model is trained, the posterior distribution will be affected by the data that is fed into each model. The results of the model e.g., the topic or topic mixture distribution will be matched with the keywords provided in the search query. To accomplish this, the system transforms the keywords of the search query into a vector and the model is used to determine the probability that the generative topic model would generate the search vector if sampled from the posterior. If the likelihood is below a certain threshold, the mobile node determines that it is not likely to have relevant information and does not answer the query);
Bilek and Chakraborty can be considered as analogous art as they belong to a similar field of endeavor in command processing. It would thus have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to advantageously combine the teachings of Chakraborty (Use of a neural network to determine query hypothesis) with those of Bilek (Use of audio processing techniques for communication between aircraft and ATC) so as to enable the system of Bilek to take full advantage of distributed query processing (Chakraborty, para 3).
With regards to claim 10, Bilek teaches the system of claim 5, wherein the response is determined via text-to-speech (Paragraphs 16-18, teach that taxiway textual command can be presented to or displayed for a pilot of an aircraft visually in addition to, audibly over the pilot headset. This would include text to speech conversion).
With regards to claim 11, Bilek teaches the system of claim 1, further comprising an aircraft flight control system communicatively coupled to the computing system and configured to execute the aircraft commands (Paragraphs 22-26, teach execution of taxiway commands including by displaying moving map overlays or guiding the aircraft via FMS);
However, Bilek may not explicitly detail that the above execution is based on transmission of the response to a remote entity. This is taught by Chakraborty (Paragraphs 19 and 38, teach that the query front-end may be a web application or any other form of server-based software that the user interacts with remotely. Further, the computer readable program instructions may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network or a wide area network or the connection may be made to an external computer through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider);
Bilek and Chakraborty can be considered as analogous art as they belong to a similar field of endeavor in command processing. It would thus have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to advantageously combine the teachings of Chakraborty (Use of a radio communication to connect with a remote entity) with those of Bilek (Use of audio processing techniques for communication between aircraft and ATC) as it is a well-known that both the aircraft onboard systems and the ATC can communicate with remote entities using internet or other networks.
With regards to claim 12, Bilek may not explicitly detail the limitation wherein the plurality of natural language queries comprises a structured set of natural language queries. However, Chakraborty teaches this (Para 18, teaches a distributed query system with a query front-end that receives a search query from a user. The search query may be a “fuzzy” query, such as a natural language query, or may alternatively be a structured query);
Bilek and Chakraborty can be considered as analogous art as they belong to a similar field of endeavor in command processing. It would thus have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to advantageously combine the teachings of Chakraborty (Use of a neural network to determine query hypothesis) with those of Bilek (Use of audio processing techniques for communication between aircraft and ATC) so as to enable the system of Bilek to take full advantage of distributed query processing (Chakraborty, para 3).
With regards to claims 13-14 and 17-19, these are method claims for the corresponding system claims 1-12. These two sets of claims are related as method and system of using the same, with each claimed system element's function corresponding to the claimed method step. Accordingly, claims 13-14 and 17-19 are similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to system claims 1-12.
With regards to claim 20, Bilek may not explicitly detail the limitation wherein the set of commands comprises a command parameter and a set of values corresponding to the command parameter, wherein the set of values and the command parameter are determined via distinct queries of the plurality of queries. However, Chakraborty teaches this (Paragraphs 28-33, teach that in addition to server-side models, the individual mobile nodes construct models using node-specific data, such as local images, audio, video, location, and other sensor data. This information is used to characterize the local data. Time can also be used along with location history and sensor information to calculate and predict future movement patterns. Neural networks may be used in particular to form classifiers on the mobile nodes. Such neural networks may be pre-trained with parameters being distributed to the mobile nodes. The server-side processing layer uses this information to build a topic model using latent Dirichlet allocation based on both textual and visual features as constituents of a latent topic mixture. The hyper-parameters of the latent model can be learned or determined through experimentation, as the model is defined by two parameters that are set a priori. Using this information, the most likely mobile nodes are determined and then the query distributed to those nodes);
Bilek and Chakraborty can be considered as analogous art as they belong to a similar field of endeavor in command processing. It would thus have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to advantageously combine the teachings of Chakraborty (Use of a neural network to determine query hypothesis) with those of Bilek (Use of audio processing techniques for communication between aircraft and ATC) so as to enable the system of Bilek to take full advantage of distributed query processing (Chakraborty, para 3).
Allowable Subject Matter
7. Claims 15-16 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims and further if the double patenting rejections outlined in this office action are overcome. The prior art of record, alone or in combination, does not currently suggest or teach the invention as outlined in these claims. More detailed reasons for allowance will be outlined as and when the Application proceeds to allowability.
Conclusion
8. The following prior art, made of record but not relied upon, is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Allibhai (U.S. Patent Application Publication # 2019/0341052 A1), Abhinav (U.S. Patent Application Publication # 2020/0257963 A1). These references are also included in the PTO-892 form attached with this office action.
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NEERAJ SHARMA whose contact information is given below. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday to Friday 8 am to 5 pm. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Pierre Louis-Desir can be reached on 571-272-7799 (Direct Phone). The fax number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
/NEERAJ SHARMA/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2659
571-270-5487 (Direct Phone)
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neeraj.sharma@uspto.gov (Direct Email)
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